FACADES THAT BREATHE

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At Kinnarps we endeavour to protect the environment and innovative solutions. And perhaps it is the young British architect Dave Edwards who has the key to how skyscrapers in big cities will become energy self-sufficient. Edwards' solution is namely green in two senses - algae will build the future!

Among all the technological advances seen in society, there are some areas where time has strangely stood still. Just take our houses for instance: Many of us live in homes that were built at the beginning of the last century and are heated by oil or electric boilers that are 50 years old. This is not very smart for either the environment or your wallet. One who wants to change this is the innovative British architect Dave Edwards, who in London's financial district has proposed a skyscraper with a revolutionary energy solution which is currently one of the great architectural topics discussed in the scientific community.

Edwards' skyscraper has an enclosed ecological system and is completely self-sufficient in energy, where the facades consist of a green skin of plants and large fields of algae which are harvested and converted into bio-methane. Waste biomass arising in the process can also be composted and reused as nutrients for the building skin. The circle is then complete when the waste water is sent through the algae fields to be recycled. Dave Edwards has been working with researchers from the university in Newcastle and the first test results are astounding. If the algae fields cover 30,000 square meters of the skyscraper, they will annually absorb 250,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide while extracting 450 tonnes of bio-methane from them, which in energy terms can be compared to what 120 average homes consume in a year.

In the future, it is not only our parks but also the houses we live in that act as the green lungs for our urban districts.